Centre mulls strategy to rescue 5,000 Indians trapped in Cambodia & forced to carry out cyber fraud back home

Amid ongoing efforts by the Indian government to rescue Indians who were deceived into working for the Russian army in the conflict with Ukraine, the Centre is now working to get over 5,000 Indians back home from Cambodia, where they are held against their own will and being forced to carry out cyber frauds on people in India.

According to a report in the Indian Express, as many as 5,000 Indians are trapped in Cambodia. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) also held a meeting with security experts in this regard earlier this month and drew up a strategy to rescue these people trapped in Cambodia.

Out of the 5,000 Indians trapped in Cambodia, most are from South India who were lured into data entry jobs in Cambodia, the report said.

The report further said that the MHA and Ministry of External Affairs speculate the stranded Indians are being also forced to dupe their fellow citizens in India through cyber fraud. "Data shows that Rs 500 crore has been lost (to cyber fraud originating in Cambodia) in India in the last six months," the IE report quoted a source as saying.

The incident came to report after Odisha police in Roukerla busted a cyber-crime syndicate on December 30 last year. The Rourkela police arrested eight people who were allegedly involved in getting Indians to Cambodia.

A senior Central government officer was reportedly duped of around Rs 70 lakh after which he approached the Rourkela Police who during the investigation nabbed the eight accused.

"We arrested eight persons from different parts of the country and we have prima facie evidence against multiple people who are involved in the scam. We issued Look Out Circulars against 16 people, following which the Bureau of Immigration this week detained two persons, Harish Kurapati and Naga Venkata Sowjanya Kurapati, at the Hyderabad airport while they were returning from Cambodia,” Indian Express quoted a senior cop from Rourkela as saying.

The Indian Express report said that till now, three people hailing from Bengaluru who were trapped in Cambodia have been brought back to the country. “An agent in Mangaluru offered me a data entry job in Cambodia. I have an ITI degree and did some computer courses during Covid. There were three of us, including someone called Babu Rao from Andhra. At the immigration, the agent mentioned that we were going on a tourist visa, which raised my suspicion," Indian Express quoted one of the rescued men identifying him to be one Stephen as saying.

Stephen then said, "In Cambodia, we were taken to an office space, where they held an interview and the two of us cleared it. They tested our typing speeds etc. It’s only later that we got to know that our job involved looking for profiles on Facebook and identifying people who can be scammed. The team was Chinese, but there was a Malaysian who translated their instructions to us in English.”

In order to arrive on a plan to get the stranded Indians back from Cambodia, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) held a meeting earlier in March, with officials of MEA, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity), the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), and other security experts.

Moreover, the source was further quoted by IE as saying that the Indians who have been forced into committing cyber fraud, have duped their fellow Indians back home of around Rs 500 crore in past six months.

“The agenda of their meeting was to discuss the organised racket and bring back those who are trapped there. Data shows that Rs 500 crore has been lost (to cyber fraud originating in Cambodia) in India in the last six months,” the source said while adding that the fraudsters are claiming to be "law enforcement personnel" while extorting money.